


All Exits Look the Same

by Jae



Category: Bandom, Empires
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-23
Updated: 2011-04-23
Packaged: 2017-10-18 12:55:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,343
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/189099
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jae/pseuds/Jae
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jon and Tom, out in the cold.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All Exits Look the Same

The sky is clear and gray above them, a flat seamless gray like the side of a battleship. In the park near Jon's house the trees have shed their leaves and Jon lies on his back on top of what remains of them, his arms and legs spread out like he's trying to make a snow angel. The leaves rustle when he moves then settle back where they were, blown a little by the wind. Tom doesn't say anything, just eases a bottle out of the six-pack he's carrying, lets it dangle from his fingers until it drops onto Jon's stomach with a soft thud. While Jon steadies it Tom takes off one of his gloves and blows onto his cold hands. Jon takes a picture without looking through his camera. From the angle Tom thinks it might be a good one, his hands cupped tight and his blue glove falling toward the ground. Tom thinks he'll probably see it again somewhere.

When Tom bends down for his glove Jon takes another picture, Tom blinking through his hair at the camera a few inches from his face. He probably won't see that one, he thinks, but he doesn't say that. Instead he sits down next to Jon and takes another beer out of the six-pack. "It's too cold for this shit," he says.

"It's too cold for anything," Jon says, lying back down. "Why do we live here again? Is winter always this fucking cold?"

"It's like having a baby," Tom says, and Jon looks over at him.

"I wouldn't know," he says, and Tom laughs.

"No, no, I mean, they say if you live here, you forget, every spring, you forget how fucking shitty winter is. Like women, you know, they say they forget how much having a baby hurts or else no one would ever have more than one. If we didn't forget how miserable it is, we wouldn't be able to stay here."

"I don't know," Jon says. "I don't remember it getting this cold this early before. Global warming, or freezing, or something, it's colder than I remember."

"You're just getting soft, all that time in California," Tom says.

Jon turns his head to look straight up at the sky.

They stay there for a while, not talking. Tom finishes his beer and Jon doesn't drink his at all. They're good at not talking, which sounds stupid but it's important, Tom thinks, if you're going to be friends with someone it can't just be when you're talking. He and Jon have always been good at not talking, have spent hours on buses and in the back of vans and lying on the floor in practice spaces not talking, neither one of them noticing the silence until one of them broke it.

They're not not talking like that now. This silence isn't something either of them have forgotten. Tom keeps starting to say something and then shutting his mouth. Jon doesn't seem to have that problem but he's not careless in the quiet, the way he once was. He seems grateful for it.

A lot of people have been asking Jon a lot of questions lately, and Jon's not like Tom, Jon's the kind of guy who always likes to have an answer for everything, for everybody. He's the kind of guy who always has, and the few times he hasn't, someone else has had a question for him, has said, "Hey, wanna come on tour?" or "Hey, wanna join our band?", the type of question that was always easy for Jon to answer. Jon's always had easy answers, not like Tom, and so people notice when he doesn't. It doesn't stop them asking, though. Tom's not sure how to say this but he thinks that might be a good thing, that people keep asking. In his experience the trouble comes when people stop.

Tom hasn't asked him any questions, not when Jon first came back, when he couldn't stop talking, when he kept Tom up till all hours telling him about what he and Ryan were working on, the new band, the new start he called it. Right to Tom's face he called it that, like he didn't remember how many times he'd promised that to Tom back before, how many times Tom swore at him and said there was no such thing. He never threw it back in Tom's face afterwards. Jon isn't the kind of guy who says I told you so, which makes him a very good friend for Tom, who always needs to be told.

Tom hasn't asked him any questions, not when Jon first came back, and not this time, when Jon came back again and it seems like he's staying, not that he's told Tom that. He hasn't told anybody, Tom knows, because all the people who ask Jon questions come to Tom afterwards and ask him, but they're used to Tom by this point. They don't get suspicious when Tom looks like he's struggling for answers, and they mostly wander off before Tom manages to put any together for them. Even if they didn't, they could stand there forever before Tom would tell them what he knows.

Tom hasn't asked him any questions, and he won't. He sits out in the park next to Jon and drinks another beer and thinks about suggesting that they go inside, where Jon could lie on a nice warm carpet and they could not talk to each other there. He doesn't, though. He sits out in the park next to Jon and stamps his feet a little to warm them up and takes off his gloves again and blows on his hands.

"I told you, it's colder than usual," Jon says, and Tom shakes his head.

"You just forgot," he says.

"No," Jon says, and then it's like the words have warmed up inside him, slow and creaky like a radiator just when the heat starts to flow. The words have warmed up inside him and it takes a minute but even before he says it Tom knows there's no stopping it.

"How long," Jon says, the words slow and rough and relentless, "how long does it take, how long did it take before you – "

He stops then, but not because the words have stopped inside him. Tom can see him bite his lip like that's the only way he can stop the words from coming out but Tom knows that only stops them for so long.

There was like a two-week period, back before, when Tom couldn't stop talking about it, couldn't shut up, no matter how much he hated the sound of his own voice he couldn't stop the words from coming, like they weren't his at all but something inside him that wanted out, one more thing he couldn't stop from happening. He couldn't stop talking, one night at the Darkroom Nick slid a fifty dollar bill across the table at him and said, "just for one night, man, I'll do anything, just knock it off, come on," but Tom hadn't been able to shut up. It stopped as suddenly as it started, and Tom hadn't said a word for four days straight, just for the sheer pleasure of silence, until his mom said she'd make him go to the doctor if he didn't start talking.

Jon's still at the beginning, though, he can still stop from saying the things he doesn't want to say, the things he doesn't want anyone else to hear, to know about him. He doesn't know yet that there's a kind of relief in not being able to stop yourself, along with the shame there's a kind of relief in hearing yourself say all the things you swallowed for so long, all the things you did or didn't do when it didn't matter anymore, the things you thought you'd die if anyone else ever heard. It makes you fearless, Tom thinks, to hear your own voice describing the worst thing that happened, the worst thing you did, and then he shakes his head a little, because he's not fearless, even now. But it makes you braver.

On the ground next to him Jon's head has fallen back into the leaves like he's relieved that Tom hasn't said anything. But maybe he really has been gone too long, if he's forgotten that it always takes Tom a long time to find his way to an answer. He always finds it though, when Jon asks.

"I don't know," he says, and Jon's head snaps around toward him. "I don't know how long it takes, not yet."

Tom has to be brave to keep looking at Jon while Jon watches him, while Jon thinks about that. Jon looks surprised, and then tired, and then just sad.

"Oh, Tommy," Jon says, "still – you still –"

Tom will never be brave enough to look at Jon when Jon looks at him like that. "It's not - - it's not like it was at the beginning, or even in the middle, it's not like I think about it all the time or anything. I mean, I made up with Bill even, kind of, you know that. But I just – I don't know, maybe some things you don't get over, you know? Maybe some things you're not supposed to get over, maybe the reason, the reason they hit you so hard is because they're supposed to leave a scar, you know? You don't get over them, you're supposed to carry them with you because they make you who you are."

On most days, to most people, Tom can say this and believe it. Maybe he's not over it but that's a good thing because it helps him to be who he is, to do what he does now. Maybe he's not over it but he's happy, he's so fucking happy, and maybe you can't ever be as happy as he is now if you can't remember that there was a time when you knew you'd never be happy again.

Most days, with most people, Tom believes this.

"You think?" Jon says softly. "You think there's a reason, that's the reason it feels like this?"

Today, with Jon, Tom says, "Mostly I do."

He looks at Jon when he says it. He won't let himself look away, even when he sees how badly Jon wants a better answer. But Tom doesn't have a better answer, he just has the true one. Most days he believes it. But there are other days, when he's exhausted at midnight on the El, when he can't sleep alone in his three a.m. apartment, when he's sitting in a cold gray park with Jon. On those other days he believes something else. He believes that if he got a chance to choose, if he could choose between everything he has now, the band and the guys and everything, his whole happy life now, and one other thing, he doesn't know what he'd choose. On those other days he believes that maybe, if he got to choose, he might give up everything he has now in exchange for one other thing: that he would never again in his whole entire life have to think about the last thing Carden said to him.

Most days Tom knows what he'd choose. Even on those other days, he's mostly sure, ninety percent sure, more even, almost all the way sure. Almost.

"Mostly?" Jon says, and Tom knows what Jon wants him to say. Tom knows what he wants to say to Jon, to Jon who promised him he'd get a new start and kept promising it until Tom got it, or the closest thing anyone ever gets. Tom knows what he wants to say but the thing about being brave is you don't always get to say what you want.

"Yeah," he says, "mostly," and Jon looks back up at the sky, a darker gray now than when they started.

After a minute Tom says, "But – it might be, it could be different for you. You're not like me, you're better than me at things like – at things, and you guys didn't – it could be different for you. You don't hold onto things like me, you might – like, not right now, but in a while, you won't feel like this, you'll forget."

Jon looks at him. "No," he says.

"You don't know," Tom says. "You could, I know it feels like you won't now but maybe, maybe you could, in a while you could forget."

Jon keeps looking at him. "Some things," he says, "you don't forget." Tom looks away.

Next to him Tom feels around and finds the remains of the six-pack, passing one to Jon, who sits it next to his first untouched beer. By the time Tom has finished Jon gets up slowly to sit cross-legged, his hands crunching in the leaves.

"I'm sorry," Tom says, twisting his beer cap between his fingers till it cuts him and he puts his finger in his mouth.

"It's all right," Jon says, for probably the nine millionth time since Tom met him. He laughs a little and pushes himself to his feet. Then he stops laughing and stands looking down at Tom. The words come in a rush when he says, "It's just – if I could believe it, even just mostly, I think – I think it could be okay, I could be okay, if I could just believe that – "

"I'll believe it for you," Tom says. He wants to.

Jon says, "You'll believe it for me mostly?" and his mouth twists up like he didn't mean to say it, like it surprised him.

"It's the best I can do," Tom says. He watches Jon think about that.

Jon reaches down a hand and lets Tom haul himself to his feet. Then he bends down again and grabs his two beers and gives one to Tom. "Okay," he says, and turns to walk toward his place. Tom follows him, blowing on his hands to get them warm.


End file.
